New Yorker film critic Richard Brody can be a fascinating and sometimes persuasive counter-puncher, especially if his views synch with mine. But he’s way too dweeby and idiosyncratic to be trusted with a first-out-of-the-gate appraisal of an unseen film. I’ll trust Owen Gleiberman, Todd McCarthy, Michael Phillips, A.O. Scott or James Verniere with such a piece, but Brody is too left-field.

In a post dated 3.14, Brody says that Richard Linklater‘s Everybody Wants Some (Paramount/Annapurna, 4.1) is “a hearty and joyous look back at life at a Texas college in 1980, as seen from within the bouncy bubble of the varsity baseball team, the weekend before the start of classes.

“The freshman pitcher Jake Bradford (Blake Jenner) and his teammates flaunt their idiosyncrasies as they strut around campus with competitive swagger, yet they’re just as lost and searching as any other undergraduates, and that tension lends the lighthearted and rowdily comic drama emotional force. Linklater captures the times with a pin-perfect sense of style, down to the droop of the mustaches and the cut of the short shorts, and his yet unheralded actors mesh with an easygoing exuberance.”

I’m sorry but this sounds like trouble, dude. Words like “hearty,” “joyous,” “bouncy” and “exuberant” are okay in themselves, but it’s scary to see them all thrown together in a single 115-word riff. Caveat emptor. I look at that one-sheet [above] and my first thought is “Yeah, I get it, guys…good times and whoo-hoo…but eat my ass.”